


The Science of Change

by mskamalakhan (blxegansey)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Less Than 5K
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-06 21:48:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4237767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blxegansey/pseuds/mskamalakhan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Jemma comes out of the rock a bit different, and Fitz is the only one who notices.</p><p>                   For the “More Than That, Less Than 5k” exchange.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Science of Change

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KittooningMalijah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittooningMalijah/gifts).



Week One  
When Jemma came back she didn’t talk for days. Everybody went in to visit her but she didn’t say anything, not until Andrew Garner had talked to her a few times. However she kept mumbling about the dark, as Andrew had reported to Coulson. Fitz tried everything to get her to talk to him, to open up about what had happened to her. He had brought her books, cooked her favorite meals, he even brought her a microscope and some samples he found around the lab, but nothing he did had any effect.  
Even after she was cleared from quarantine she kept to herself. Everybody said that was normal after what Jemma had been through, but he thought that she was avoiding him, just like she had after what happened at the bottom of the ocean.

Week Two  
He tried talking to her all the time, but she refused to tell him about what had happened. She was acting like nothing had happened; like she hadn’t been gone for three months, or they hadn’t planned to go on a date. She acted like they weren’t so close; it was much worse than the last time.  
He made small talk with her just like the rest of the team. He was just trying to give her some space, as she evidently didn’t want to go back to how they were before. That hurt a lot, but the fact that Jemma Simmons, his best friend, was still alive and well was the best thing ever after trying to figure out a way to find her for three months.  
One morning, he walked into the lab and saw her working for the first time after they had rescued her. She was absent-mindedly looking at a sample in a petri dish and didn’t notice him coming in. Leo went in and stood by her side watching her trying to think of something to say. She didn’t even notice him then; she was staring ahead with a frown on her brow.  
“What are you doing, Jemma?” He asked, startling her and making her jump. At which point she started apologizing awkwardly and hastily left the lab.  
This wasn’t the first time something like that had happened. She had flinched once or twice when he had accidentally brushed his hand against hers at meals. He just sighed and left the lab too, in the direction of the garage.  
At least he had Mack and Skye to talk to. Despite all their kindness and care, they weren’t … Jemma. He hardly ever had to explain himself to her, as if they didn’t need words to communicate- well at least most of the time. But things were different now, Jemma Simmons had changed.

Week Three  
Simmons was healing faster now; she was constantly seeing Andrew, which apparently helped her adjust better. As Skye told Fitz, Jemma had started training with May and practiced a few hours each day. He’d even heard May talk about how well she was doing.  
She didn’t do much else; but she was talking again. Although she didn’t talk about what had happened to her, she talked to the team at meals (if she was there at all), but she mostly talked to Skye.  
Even now she was still going out of her way to avoid Fitz. He wanted to reach out to her, but everybody kept telling him to give her some space. So he did, if it meant that she’d feel better.

Week Four  
They were all gathered in one of the playground’s larger rooms after Skye and Bobbi had come back from a mission. Skye was standing next to Fitz, holding a half-empty bottle of beer while talking to him about how she had swooshed in and saved Bobbi. He didn’t hear most of her story as he was absentmindedly spinning a coaster in his hands and looking at Jemma talking to May across the room.  
“Hey, FITZ!” Skye was waving a hand in front of his face.  
“Sorry, I was just thinking.”  
“What about?”  
“Jemma, she’s really...er…distant. She didn’t even act like this when she came back from HYDRA.”  
“Well, this time is different. She’ll just need some time,” Skye said, taking a large gulp from her beer, “She was all alone for three months after all. Don’t worry she’d soon be the same Simmons as ever and you could start talking and doing science-y stuff again. But now you should just stop brooding and have a drink.”  
He supposed it was a good thing that he hadn’t told anybody about their plan of a date; but he craved to talk to somebody about that. He really hated this situation; he hated how she had pushed him away again. Just as he thought of leaving for the lab, Jemma looked up from her drink and waved at him, smiling shyly.

Week Five  
Watching Jemma’s newly acquired skills was incredible. She had regular workouts and even went jogging every day! It was really hard to understand how she could run that long without getting tired. She always exercised every day to keep in shape, but it was never this serious.  
Fitz was wondering what all this rigorous exercise was for when Jemma walked towards him. Sitting beside him on the ground, she grabbed her bottle of water.  
“Are you sure you don’t want to learn a few tricks from Agent May?”  
“No, thanks. It wouldn’t be really wise to voluntarily get in a fight with her.”  
After sipping a little water, Simmons lied down on an exercise matt and started doing push-ups, counting every time her back hit the ground.  
As she bent up and down, the loose fabric of her clothes moved with her, revealing her sweaty slightly-muscled waist.  
“Oi, what are you staring at?”  
“Nothing … nothing,” he stammered nervously. “It just seems like you’ve muscled up a bit.”

Week Six  
He was standing by the kitchen counter with his hands crossed over; everyone was cleared for the afternoon since they had gathered all the information they could about HYDRA’s possible new heads.  
“Are you going to drink that?” Jemma had come back from her training and was standing in front of him pointing at the cup of tea getting cold in front of him.  
“No, you can have it.” He was thinking of talking to her to try to find out about what had happened to her.  
“Is there something you’d like to say, Fitz?” Jemma looked at him sipping the tea.  
“Well, I just want to…” He paused looking at Simmons from across the counter. “You know that you can talk to me about anything, right?”  
“Yeah, I know.” Her lips were curved up in a beautiful smile, something that rarely happened now.  
He spent the rest of that day-and some part of the night- working on one of his side-projects, altering some parameters to make a new updated toolbox for Director Coulson. Frustrated, he wanted to talk to Jemma as she always helped him see things from different angles.  
He was on his way to her room, when he realized that it was 3 a.m. and was about to get back to the lab when he heard heavy breathing from behind him.  
He turned around to see Simmons walking towards him in her exercise clothes, sweaty and panting.  
“Hey, I thought you were asleep. What were you doing up at this hour?”  
“I was running.”  
“Running? Since when do you run in the middle of the night?” He regretted saying that as it had clearly made her uncomfortable. “Anyways, I was going to ask you for some advice.”  
“Fitz, would you mind if we talk about that another time? I’m really tired right now.  
“Yeah, sure. You go get some rest.”  
Why would Simmons exercise every day and night? She was probably trying to hide something from the rest of them. When Skye had gone through the mist she tried to hide her abilities from them too. But unlike her, Jemma was an introvert and she was also much more secretive than Skye. 

Week Seven  
He decided he would check Simmons’ DNA samples, even though they had already done that when she got back. He was quite sure that something was different about her, she was stronger and faster. She could be Inhuman. He wanted to talk to Skye, but she was away recruiting Inhumans. He couldn’t even talk to Coulson as he was away all the time, and when he was actually at the Playground he was really busy and Fitz didn’t want to bother him.  
He sneaked in the lab one night when everyone was asleep and pulled up Simmons’ medical files from the time of the quarantine. He started running some tests on the samples of blood they had gathered. As it was a very complex test and would take some time he occupied himself with other things.  
He started tweaking the toolbox he was working on, and even got time to read some his favorite parts of the Hitchhiker’s Guide. He eventually fell asleep during a game of GTA with his tablet running analysis by his side.  
When he woke up a couple of hours later in the morning, Agent May was sitting on one of the couches holding the tablet. As Fitz sat up and adjusted himself, May faced him and gave him a questioning look.  
“I can explain...” he struggled to come up with some believable explanation while rubbing his eyes. “It’s a- some tissue samples from Simmons from the quarantine. I just wanted to make sure that nothing was out of the ordinary.”  
“Why would there be?” her eyebrows were raised in that threatening way.  
“Um, with the Kree rock and how she’s been acting different, I thought-”  
“How has she been acting any differently?”  
“Well, you know, she was never like this.” He was once again at a loss to express himself.  
“Like what?” May paused and frowned at him, “Is this because she’s been distant? Because that is completely understandable and natural.”  
“I’m not upset that she’s being distant.” His hands were nervously fidgeting with the edge of the couch, and he was avoiding eye contact with Agent May. “Well I AM upset, but that’s not the reason I’m worried. We don’t know anything about that rock, and where or even when Jemma was. All we know is that it is Kree and it has something to do with the Inhumans. So I have plenty of reasons to be alarmed about Simmons’ safety.”  
She looked concerned and didn’t say anything for a long time, after a long pause she leant ahead and said. “Andrew has been monitoring Simmons and she’s been doing well, apart from memory gaps, she seems to be acting as normally as one can. And you’re lab results confirm that.”  
“There’s no reason for you to worry Fitz.” She handed him the tablet and patted him on the shoulder as she left the room.  
Fitz sat there just looking at the results he had gotten trying to understand if something had gone wrong until Mack came in and urged him to eat breakfast.  
Week Eight  
Even Mack did not think anything was different with Simmons, he even said that some of his old friends had been different after their colleagues turned out to be HYDRA agents. But this was different; none of them understood how Jemma and he had been. Nothing ever affected their friendship, not even when either of them had been dating other people in the Academy, or even after Jemma had been infected by the Chitauri virus. The only thing that ever changed their relationship was his declaration of non-platonic feelings for her. Was that really the reason she was acting like that?  
However, that was not likely as Simmons had been equally eager to go on a date with him. There was also the probability of amnesia erasing the memory of that conversation. But either way, nothing not even the shock or trauma she had been through could explain her behavior. That was a bit cruel, but true. If anything, she would have needed him as a friend to help her through that.  
At least, Skye was going to come back to the Playground after a long while, bringing around thirty Inhumans that she had successfully convinced of S.H.I.L.D.’s innocence of the events that had happened at Afterlife. He could at least ask them about the Kree rock, and find out what it did.  
Week Nine  
The past few days had been anything but easy, Fitz was trying to work up his courage to talk to Simmons about the change but he had no idea how to start a conversation like that. He was also unsure about the impact of saying something like that to her health.  
On top of it all, Skye and the Inhumans had arrived to ally with S.H.I.E.L.D. They were training for a project Coulson had assigned to Skye. It all drove Jemma further into her shell, making her avoid leaving her room a lot. He took her books and snacks and he even talked to her about Jane Austen, just to get her to cheer up for a bit.  
Fitz talked to Skye and the other Inhumans about the Kree rock. Surprisingly none of them were able to help him at all as most of them were new at Afterlife and hadn’t even heard of the mysterious rock. Even Lincoln, who had been at Afterlife longer, had no idea what the rock did.  
After a while most of the new recruits were transferred to a bigger location more suited to their needs called Attilan city, which resulted in Simmons leaving her room more often. Skye promised him-although rather unconvincingly- that she would ask around about the rock and tell him everything she found out.  
Week Ten  
After the Inhumans had left Fitz started analyzing the data they had gathered, trying to understand whether Simmons was an Inhuman too. It would have been so much easier if Skye was there to help him, but she had left with the rest of the Inhumans to meet their leader in New Attilan.  
He always did the research at night, not that he wasn’t supposed to access those files but rather that he didn’t want Jemma to find out about his suspicions.  
One morning after many hours of poring over printed charts and several cups of coffee, he was sleepily making some notes when he heard footsteps coming near the lab. He cheered up thinking it was Mack.  
“Hey, Mack. I think I’m making some progress” he shouted over his shoulder while arranging some of the papers on the desk.  
“What are you doing Fitz?” Simmons was standing over him, reading over his shoulders.  
“Um… nothing.” He nervously tried to conceal his tablet, “I’m just reading… stuff.”  
“Are you studying the Inhumans’ abilities?” she grabbed a chair and sat down beside him. “And you happen to be comparing their blood samples with mine?”  
“It’s just...”  
“It’s okay, Fitz” She gave him an apprehensive look. “I know what you’ve been doing these past few weeks.”  
“What?” she was looking at the files open on his tablet. “Jemma, I think the Kree rock changed you. You’ve been acting differently.”  
“Yes. I know, Leo. Of course I have changed; I was trapped in a rock for three months! It’s really hard to be normal after that, don’t you think so?”  
“Yeah, but there are things that aren’t explained by that. You’re so much stronger and faster now and you exercise all the time, just like Skye. Inhuman abilities could be the reason.”  
“It’s just my way of coping with things. You’re just overreacting.”  
“Are you sure?”  
“YES! Of course.” She rolled her chair closer to his and held his hand. “I’m okay, Leo.”  
He smiled at her and said, “Did May tell you?”  
“No. You’ve been acting very suspicious lately, and on top of that you seem to be afraid to talk to me.”  
“What? I thought you wanted to have some space.”  
“Well, yeah.”  
“I thought you didn’t want to talk to me after we decided to go on a date. I thought you had changed your mind.”  
“Oh, Fitz. Of course I still want to go out with you. Nothing has changed.”  
“Really?” it was really hard to believe that she had just said that.  
“Yes.” She leaned in towards him and gently kissed him on the cheek.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope I didn't disappoint you.


End file.
